Tungsten carbide/carbon composites coated with little platinum nano particles derived from the redox reaction between in-situ synthesized WC1−x and chloroplatinic acid as the electrocatalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction

Abstract A kind of less platinum hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalyst, 3%Pt/WC/C 10 , is successfully synthesized using a simple in-situ platinum reduction method of directly mixing WC/C 10 and chloroplatinic acid in deionized water and then drying. The structure and morphology are mainly characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The as-synthesized 3%Pt/WC/C 10 catalyst behaves the most excellent synthetically electrocatalytic performance with a small overpotential of 85 mV at 10 mA cm −2 and 129 mV at 30 mA cm −2 . It is almost same with that commercial 10%Pt/C catalyst, which indicates that the synergistic role of tungsten carbide and platinum can effectively reduce the amount of platinum on the condition of obtaining equivalent electrocatalytic activity. The stability after 1000 cycles is observed more excellent than original sample at the current density above 40 mA cm −2 . The reason of excellent electrocatalytic stability maybe the turning of from residual platinum hydroxide including Pt(IV) has been reduced by hydrogen adsorption on electrode surface to Pt(0) and increase the ability of corrosion resistance.